A large window, reaching to the ground, opened on a smooth and sloping lawn, which was adorned by most beautiful flowers.  It led to a small gate opening on a long, narrow lane, which led to the Vicarage, leaving the little church and its picturesque burying-ground a little to the right; the thick grove which surrounded it forming a leafy yet impenetrable wall to one side of the garden.  There were many very pretty tombs in this churchyard; perhaps its beauty consisted in its extreme neatness, and the flowers that the vicar, Mr. Myrvin, took so much pleasure in carefully preserving.  One lowly grave, beneath a large and spreading yew, was never passed unnoticed.  A plain marble stone denoted that there lay one, who had once been the brightest amid the bright, the brilliant star of a lordly circle.  The name, her age, and two simple verses were there inscribed; but around that humble grave there were sweet flowers flourishing more luxuriantly than in any other part of the churchyard; the climbing honeysuckle twined its odoriferous clusters up the dark trunk of the storm-resisting yew.  Roses of various kinds intermingled with the lowly violet, the snowdrop, lily of the valley, the drooping convolvulus, which, closing its petals for a time, is a fit emblem of that sleep which, closing our eyes on earth, reopens them in heaven, beneath the general warmth of the sun of righteousness.  These flowers were sacred in the eyes of the villagers, and their children were charged not to despoil them; and too deep was their reverence for their minister, and too sacred was that little spot of earth, even to their uncultured eyes, for those commands ever to be disobeyed.  But it was not to Mr. Myrvin’s care alone that part of the churchyard owed its beauty.  It had ever been distinguished from the rest by the flowers around it; but it was only the last two years they had flourished so luxuriantly; the hand of Lilla Grahame watered and tended them with unceasing care.  In the early morning or the calm twilight she was seen beside the grave, and many might have believed that there reposed the ashes of a near and dear relation, but it was not so.  Lilla had never seen and never known the lovely being whose last home she thus affectionately tended.  It was dear to her from its association with him whom she loved, there her thoughts could wander to him; and surely the love thus cherished beside the dead must have been purity itself.

It was the hour that Lilla usually sought the churchyard, but she came not, and the lengthening shadows of a soft and lovely May evening fell around the graceful figure of a tall and elegant young man, in naval uniform, who lingered beside the grave; pensive, it seemed, yet scarcely melancholy.  His fine expressive countenance seemed to breathe of happiness proceeding from the heart, chastened and softened by holier thoughts.  A smile of deep feeling encircled his lips as he looked on the flowers, which in this season were just bursting